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TikTok confirms it offered US government a 'kill switch'
(www.bbc.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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There is a substantial difference between posting content to a platform trying to influence people, and actually changing the platform algorithm to surface or suppress ideas a foreign (or even domestic) state likes or doesn't.
Lemmy certainly doesn't have the second type. And even american commercial social media sites don't really do it for a specific political agenda; For them it's only about whatever's more profitable.
Lemmy is an open system in and of itself, and the resultant platform algorithms are open by design, it's just wishful nonsense to think a state actor can't 'surface or suppress' ideas even here with a little effort.
Oh my sweet summer child, we're at the coercion of news media redux for social media...
https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-blocks-order-curbing-biden-administration-social-media-contacts-2023-10-20/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/biden-administration-blocked-from-working-with-social-media-firms-about-protected-speech
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/11/fbi-white-house-likely-coerced-social-media-platforms-appeals-court.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Investigate_the_FBI
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hearings/ciasuseofjournal00unit.pdf
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp91-00901r000500050029-0
How could you post so many links about social media influence on politics and miss the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal
Good catch, I got interrupted with work mid post, thats probably the most notable example for sure.
And all of those examples are about parts of the US government stopping other parts of the same government from trying to get our corporations to do what they want. China has no system to control itself like that. It doesn't have to ask BiteDance anything; They own it and would shut it down in a heartbeat if they couldn't absolutely control it.
What?
Those examples are after-it-actually-happened reports of the US government actively getting corporations to do what they want.
Get your head out of the sand.
I don't trust China, but I'm not going to lie to myself to feel better about a political hitjob, even if Bytedance has it's multinational corporate governance primarily under China.
Kapersky is the example you want to point at for an example of a bad actor corp capturing classified data and sending it to an adversarial government. TikTok just trended anti-political messages for a few different popular politicians and lit a match as a result.
Not talking about collecting or sharing data.
There's no real evidence they did.
Even if they did, that's not a good enough reason to cut them off, though it is the reason many politicians want to; That, and the Israeli apartheid / genocide stuff.
But again, there's no evidence ByteDance and TickTok is doing anything about those topics.
Did you read the article I linked to?
It is the NYTimes, I get it if you didn't; Their paywall's annoying.
Here's a Kagi summary:
They're just mad they can't do a genocide without being called out by the youths. If anything, the American social media companies are the ones to watch out for because they're actively suppressing news on the content, the thing we're pretending to be worried that the Chinese government will do to this app.